Finding Time: Part 3 - Structure your day for efficiency
Missed the first posts in this series? Start here.
In following up to my last post encouraging you to consider rising early, I wanted to post and respond to a question I received recently:
It is easy to think that one way to add in extra hours to our day is to just skip sleep. I have learned the hard way that if I don't get plenty of sleep for more than a few days, I am not a nice person to be around, nor am I productive. Instead, I'm a grouchy, walking zombie.
And this doesn't make for a cheerful, efficient manager of my home, let me tell you!
So, by making a commitment to get up early, I've also had to re-learn the habit of going to bed early. I am almost wondering if this is as important or maybe even more important than getting up early. This has been difficult for me as I like staying up late and can easily burn the midnight or 2 AM oil. But by knowing that I am much more productive when I get up early, I've been working to discipline myself to also get in bed early.
I've found that the only way I can consistently get up before 6:00 AM is to go to bed by 10:00 PM. In fact, I try to be in bed by 9:00 PM. I don't usually make it quite by then, but by shooting to be in bed by 9:00 PM, it guarantees that I am working towards heading in that direction which, in turn, means I go to bed at a decent hour.
What has worked out best for us at this season of our lives is for our whole family to go to bed around the same time (usually around 9:30-10 PM). We eat dinner, spend some time as a family, have our family worship time together, get the girls ready for bed and then go to bed ourselves. In the mornings, Jesse and I get up early and we let the girls sleep in. This gives us some quality family time at night and then some one-on-one couple time in the morning.
I usually wake Kaitlynn up with me when I get up (normally around 5 AM, sometimes a little later if I've been up with one or both of the girls in the night) and I nurse her while I read the Bible and pray. She sits close by while I do my exercise routine and then I put her back to bed. Jesse and I then have some time to spend together before he leaves for the contract job he's currently doing and then I have around two hours to shower, start laundry, and do an hour of computer work before the girls get up.
I know many moms put their young children down by 7:30 or 8:00 PM. That's great if that's what works for your family. I've found that if I put the girls down much before I go to bed, I have a tendency to get busy working on projects once they are asleep and then I forget to look at what time it is and pretty soon it is past midnight. This throws everything for a loop because if I go to bed at midnight or 1 AM and then try to get up at 5 or 6 AM, I am not well-rested, which means I don't function well during the day, which means I'm much less productive.
I've also found that I am much more efficient in my time usage when I get up early than I am in my time usage when I stay up late. For some reason, I normally accomplish much less when working from 10-midnight than I do when working from 6-8 AM. I know that's not the case with everyone, but it is certainly the case with me.
I share all of this not because I think that every family should adopt a schedule like ours. Let me repeat what I've said a few times in this series: This is just what works for our family at this season of our lives! But my hope in sharing this is to motivate everyone to think about adapting their schedule to what works best for their family. And to keep adapting things as your needs or situation changes.
We'll talk more about home management schedules in a later post in this series, but today I want you to consider the basic structure for your day:
-Is it conducive to the current needs of your family?
-Is it allowing you to get adequate rest?
-Are you maximizing your peak performance times (i.e. the time(s) during the day when you are most efficient and productive?)
-If you are married, is it allowing you to be available to meet the needs of your husband and enabling you to be a cheerful and calm help meet?
And specifically for Kathy, I just want to encourage you to see if maybe there is anyway you can rearrange your schedule or cut something from it so that you are able to get more sleep. The SuperMom vitamins are great and I highly recommend them, but they don't replace adequate sleep. Talk to your husband, talk the Lord, and I'll pray that you are able to get some good encouragement and direction.
If anyone else would like to share what structure works for their day or any thoughts or encouragement for Kathy, feel free to chime in.
To be continued...
In following up to my last post encouraging you to consider rising early, I wanted to post and respond to a question I received recently:I know your goal is to get up at 5 am. May I ask what time you generally go to bed? How many hours of sleep do you usually get a night? Do you and Jesse usually go to bed around the same time?Lest anyone gets the wrong impression, let me re-iterate that I am not some wonder-woman who requires only a few hours of sleep at night! I do like to be efficient, but I have learned quickly that being well-rested is one of the most important things in enabling me to be a good manager of time.
I usually get 6-7 hours of sleep but sometimes only 5 (bad I know, but I work from home when daughter is sleeping and HAVE to get my work done by deadlines). I find that I just generally feel pretty tired all the time and especially feel sleepy in the early afternoon. I've never been able to nap and now don't have the opportunity as I must work when daughter is having quiet time.
Maybe I will have to give the Supermom vitamins a try as I don't see my work schedule and mothering schedule changing anytime soon :) -Kathy
It is easy to think that one way to add in extra hours to our day is to just skip sleep. I have learned the hard way that if I don't get plenty of sleep for more than a few days, I am not a nice person to be around, nor am I productive. Instead, I'm a grouchy, walking zombie.
And this doesn't make for a cheerful, efficient manager of my home, let me tell you!
So, by making a commitment to get up early, I've also had to re-learn the habit of going to bed early. I am almost wondering if this is as important or maybe even more important than getting up early. This has been difficult for me as I like staying up late and can easily burn the midnight or 2 AM oil. But by knowing that I am much more productive when I get up early, I've been working to discipline myself to also get in bed early.
I've found that the only way I can consistently get up before 6:00 AM is to go to bed by 10:00 PM. In fact, I try to be in bed by 9:00 PM. I don't usually make it quite by then, but by shooting to be in bed by 9:00 PM, it guarantees that I am working towards heading in that direction which, in turn, means I go to bed at a decent hour.
What has worked out best for us at this season of our lives is for our whole family to go to bed around the same time (usually around 9:30-10 PM). We eat dinner, spend some time as a family, have our family worship time together, get the girls ready for bed and then go to bed ourselves. In the mornings, Jesse and I get up early and we let the girls sleep in. This gives us some quality family time at night and then some one-on-one couple time in the morning.
I usually wake Kaitlynn up with me when I get up (normally around 5 AM, sometimes a little later if I've been up with one or both of the girls in the night) and I nurse her while I read the Bible and pray. She sits close by while I do my exercise routine and then I put her back to bed. Jesse and I then have some time to spend together before he leaves for the contract job he's currently doing and then I have around two hours to shower, start laundry, and do an hour of computer work before the girls get up.
I know many moms put their young children down by 7:30 or 8:00 PM. That's great if that's what works for your family. I've found that if I put the girls down much before I go to bed, I have a tendency to get busy working on projects once they are asleep and then I forget to look at what time it is and pretty soon it is past midnight. This throws everything for a loop because if I go to bed at midnight or 1 AM and then try to get up at 5 or 6 AM, I am not well-rested, which means I don't function well during the day, which means I'm much less productive.
I've also found that I am much more efficient in my time usage when I get up early than I am in my time usage when I stay up late. For some reason, I normally accomplish much less when working from 10-midnight than I do when working from 6-8 AM. I know that's not the case with everyone, but it is certainly the case with me.
I share all of this not because I think that every family should adopt a schedule like ours. Let me repeat what I've said a few times in this series: This is just what works for our family at this season of our lives! But my hope in sharing this is to motivate everyone to think about adapting their schedule to what works best for their family. And to keep adapting things as your needs or situation changes.
We'll talk more about home management schedules in a later post in this series, but today I want you to consider the basic structure for your day:
-Is it conducive to the current needs of your family?
-Is it allowing you to get adequate rest?
-Are you maximizing your peak performance times (i.e. the time(s) during the day when you are most efficient and productive?)
-If you are married, is it allowing you to be available to meet the needs of your husband and enabling you to be a cheerful and calm help meet?
And specifically for Kathy, I just want to encourage you to see if maybe there is anyway you can rearrange your schedule or cut something from it so that you are able to get more sleep. The SuperMom vitamins are great and I highly recommend them, but they don't replace adequate sleep. Talk to your husband, talk the Lord, and I'll pray that you are able to get some good encouragement and direction.
If anyone else would like to share what structure works for their day or any thoughts or encouragement for Kathy, feel free to chime in.
To be continued...
Labels: Finding Time
posted by Crystal Paine at 4:40 PM
35 Comments:
I normally do fine to put the kids down at 7pm and go to bed around midnight and get up at 7:30 a.m. But since I got pregnant I'm exhausted! I go to bed at 10 or 11 and sleep in until 8! However, I maximize the morning hours and try to get as much cleaning and grunt work done early on so that I can rest or read in the afternoon when the kids nap and then I use what remaining energy I have to finish supper and clean up the kitchen a bit and attend to sewing or mending or light projects. I definitely agree that starting early is good (early for me is 7 or 8!) and I think if you shower and fix up immediately it goes a long way toward making you feel better about yourself and get more accomplished than if you lounge around in pajama sweats until 3 pm.
My husband is NOT a morning person so he would prefer I spend time with him in the evenings rather than both of us getting up earlier. I'm more of a night person too! But because our kids get up at the same time we do, it makes it more difficult to find personal quiet time for devotions.
Crystal,
I'm a fellow lover of "burning the midnight oil", which I actually think comes from loving the silence and peacefulness that a sleeping house affords. :o) But, I definitely am not my emotional and mental best when it's late at night vs. early in the morning. It's 4:54 am here in PA right now and I've been awake since 4:30, LOL, when hubby left for work and am beginning to do some dishes, get dressed and get the day rolling.
It's funny how if I stay in bed 'til my daughter awakens (7:30/8 am), then I feel like I'm dragging by 9:00 am - when we've only been awake for about an hour!! But on days when I'm up early, it's already about five hours into the workday when 9 am rolls around...and I've barely noticed the clock. :o)
I'm glad you stressed that your schedule is not "the" way, but rather the point is to tweak your own schedule so that it will work for you.
When I first had my dd I tried to follow someone else's routine - and while it worked somewhat - I was frustrated that I was doing everything right - but was not getting the results they said I would get!
I realized that all the information "out there" on organizing / scheduling etc. is only a GUIDE not a by-the-book guarantee.
It works in our family for our kids to go to bed early - thus my dh and I have time alone in the evenings. We do not have the luxury of regular babysitters or family close by - so if we want to spend time alone together (or just time alone separately) - it helps that the kids go to bed early.
It also works for us all to rise around the same time in the morning - my dh and I can exercise before breakfast and the kids can see dad awhile before he leaves for work.
Getting an early morning start also means we can begin homeschooling earlier in the day - thereby having a good part of the day to do other things.
Great post, Crystal! :) I have a few comments:
1st)I just want to agree on the whole morning thing and getting up early. I was NEVER a morning person. I liked staying up late, but then found after having children, that didn't work so well. I tried and tried to change, but it never worked. Well...ya' know what finally did work? LOL A couple years ago I ended up getting my personal training certification and began training women at a nearby gym. Well, I didn't want it to interfere with our family life, so I knew my available hours were limited. Turns out, they really wanted someone to come in and train at 5:30am! I about croaked and my husband laughed, knowing I'm not a morning person! LOL But, I wanted to do this dream God had put in my heart and I wanted it to work for our family, and this way I could train one client and then come home and be here when my kids got up. They're older, so it worked really well for us. So guess what? I started getting up at 4:15am every single morning, much to my husband's shock. IT WAS SO HARD!!!! But, it was a job, so I HAD to be there and wasn't about to be late! It took several months and it was hard to transition. BUT...it wasn't an option to be late, so I had to make it work. We've moved and I'm not currently training, but I'm still up about 5am every morning because it's become habit (dh is up early to go to work, too, so that helps -- and he laughs at how much I've changed). We're almost always in bed around 9pm. I guess I share that simply to say -- when you HAVE to do it, it's amazing how much more you CAN do than you think you can, and trust me -- if I can re-train my body to get up early and go to bed earlier, anyone can! :) BUT -- dh and I both enjoy sleeping in on Saturdays! LOL (AND -- I'm NOT like Crystal in the exercise department. I cannot workout in the morning! LOL I've tried! So, I get up and get lots of things done and then workout after lunch. It's a good mid-day break for me and works well.)
2nd) What worked for me, too, was to start taking "MidNite". It's an all-natural melatonin supplements from Walgreens. It quickly dissolves on your tongue and would help me to fall asleep. This helped me get into a pattern of going to bed earlier without my mind racing.
3rd) As a personal trainer, one of the things I'd often hear is that my clients were tired in the afternoon, as Kathy said. And, my first question is: what are you eating for lunch? The best way to have energy in the afternoon is to limit your amount of refined carbohydrates that you have for lunch. Too many simple carbs for lunch is a sure-fire way to have no energy in the afternoon. Not sure what your diet is like, but just something to possibly consider.
Debi :)
oh my....I needed this! I don't have a routine, other than wasting lots of valuable time during the day! I have severe sleep apnea, which i'm looking into getting taken care of. I am constantly tired and while I love to get up early, it just isn't easy.
Thanks for this encouragement!
I would love to put our boys to bed earlier but my husband doesn't get home until after 6p. If I put the boys to bed at 7:30-8:00, he'd get very little DADDY time. Instead, we put them to bed at 9-9:30 and I try to be thankful I have a husband who actually WANTS to spend time with our sons and me.
If Hubby plays basketball on a weeknight, he's apt to take a boy or two with him so I can have a smallish break. If he's gone lots of nights, he lets me have some hours off on the weekend to shop or go to the library to read books that don't involve purple dinosaurs or trains on the island of Sodor.
P.S. I also wanted to add that routines are just as efficient as "schedules". It seems that Crystal has a routine that works for her, and each family can create one that is beneficial to them. Woe to all of those books out there commanding parents to put their kids to bed at this time, have them eat at that time, etc., etc. It never would've worked for my daughter and our family, but having routines, which do change as the child grows, were always great...and continue to be.
I would have to agree with Kelly somewhat. While we definately don't have a strict schedule: as in each item needs to get done at a certain time, we do have a routine and an order of how things get done and what comes first. The predictability of it has really helped the kids, and more importantly ME. Especially with schoolwork thoughout the morning. I am definately easily sidetracked, so like I said...it really is mostly for me.
That being said, I too am apt to burn the midnight (or later) oil, but have been recently convicted (before Crystal's post) to get up earlier. While I am usually up around 7/7:30 I think 6/6:30 is a goal I should aim for. It would be so much easier if I were trying to do this in March...but, in January, when the sun isn't out, I am hardly motivated to get out of my warm bed any earlier than I have to. Laziness...I know! We put the kids down between 7:30-8:00 most nights and they are both 12 hour sleepers. They are 4 and 6 now, but we have trained them from an early age to stay in bed until we come for them. So sometimes if I get started on a project they may stay in their rooms until 8:30. They often read (or look at, for the younger one) their bibles or picture bibles in their beds in the morning if they get up earlier and we are so happy with that desire. As our oldest is an avid reader, my husband recently made the rule that any reading right before bed or first thing in the morning can only be of a biblical nature, whether a bible story, devotional, etc. in order to help instill it as a habit later on. Just what goes on here for us right now :0)
What a great post, Crystal! I too would naturally stay up until very late and this is something that the Lord has really been working on my heart about. I definitely get more done when I get up early. I would have to if I had a job outside the home and what more important job than being a Christian, wife, and mother.
I too have been getting up at 5, but tend to go to bed by 10. It was an interesting idea about going to bed the same time your children do. That is definitely food for thought. Thanks for the encouragement.
Edwena
This is definitely a word in due season for me. I was just lamenting yesterday about my lack of efficiency. I've worked full time outside the home for the past 7 years and now am working full time from home. The transition is not going as well as I'd like and I know God is wanting to teach me some discipline and obedience. I am up by 6:30 every morning but typically don't get dressed until the family leaves after 7:30. I tend to get "stuck" in the office and forget that I'm home and can come out. I also struggle with getting any work done and just piddling the day away. Something must change so this is a word in due season for me.
Hi Crystal,
This is something I am working on and continue to struggle with.
I try hard to go to bed early....my husband is a night owl! He is working on getting to bed earlier too - but it often isn't early enough for me to get up when I want to.
However, I'm still trying.
When I sleep until my kids wake me up the day starts out bad. I'm not ready for it. So even half an hour earlier is better than nothing.
Also, whenever I put my kids to bed late, they wake up early! My son's room is close to the street and quite loud in the mornings.
I am trying to go to bed closer to the time they do. I think that is a really good idea.
I have started to work on projects in the afternoon rest time instead of at night - like you said, it is so easy to stay up late when you work on things at night.
Thanks for the ideas.
Stacy
I don't work at home (officially!!) but I am homeschooling 6 children between the ages of 2 and 9 - so my day gets very busy and I also stuggle with the ability to fit everything in.
This is what I have found works best for me. We have all the children in bed by 8pm and then I need an hour or so just to unwind from the day by drinking a cup of tea and reading book or working on the computer. I find that if I am in bed by 10pm I can rise (easier) at 5.30 or 6. If I spend time with the Lord and get showered and dressed before breakfast I get so much more accomplished during the day.
I really struggle if I sleep late, as I miss my time with my Heavenly Father, get busy with the kids and am unable to dress until 9am. Then school is late starting and it's harder to keep their attention. I find if I am dragging then the kids are dragging.
What I dislike the most is getting to the end of the day knowing that I haven't accomplished much because I didn't start the day right.
I am far from being efficient in my time management, but I'm working on it!
Michelle
I've been getting up at 6:30 for most of the last four years, mainly to make time with the Lord a priority. However, I also have to be in bed by 10. :) A funny little trick we've been doing lately is my husband turns on the shower water as he goes out the door at 6:30 -- so I have to get up if I want some of that hot water. It sure helps me get up!
On the other hand, I understand that different things work for different people and their needs. When my disease flares up, I need more like 12 hours of sleep, which is early to bed and late to rise however you schedule it. So I just have to be extra diligent with time management and have lower expectations on those days.
The Lord knows what we are or aren't able to do, so we just have to be faithful disciplined with the energy He has given us.
Do you have any advice for the full time workplace wife? I've been really struggling with what my role ought to be. Since I don't get anything done around the house during the day I try to make up for it at night, but to me, cleaning does not qualify as "quality couple time". I don't feel like I am able to create that "haven" you all talk about, though I wish I could.
My 4yo has gotten up between 4:30 and 5:30 for years. We spent a couple of years doing our best to reprogram her biological clock to no avail. We finally just gave up on it. I have a big to-do list every morning and I just have to force myself to say "Here's some oatmeal, here's a VeggieTales movie, stay in the living room, and do NOT WAKE UP YOUR BABY SISTER." Then I'm free to do my morning blitz of the house (packing lunches, unloading the dishwasher, starting laundry, etc.) and she feels like she's getting a big treat by watching a video (severly limited around here). It's not ideal, but it's the best I can do in this season of our lives!
Right now we are striving for more routine, but everyday seems to bring a new challenge to it! Hopefully, once the baby arrives I can get more sleep and get back on track. Yes, I said sleep when the baby comes. I acctually sleep better and more w/ a new little one than I do in the last trimester of pregnancy! Right now a few hours seems about max. And that is not in a row, more like an hour here, hour there through out the night. Not enough for me to function! Our routine normally is to have our kids in bed by 8, then hubs and I spend some time reading or chatting over tea for an hour or so. We strive to be in bed by 9-10 also. We have found that we have to put our kids down early because no matter what time they go to bed they are up by 6.30 at the latest! Hubs and I are up by 5.30 (Him) and 6 (me, if the night goes well) and we don't let the kids get out of bed until 7. It is fun to listen to them chat in their room in the early hours. Our 4 yo. son will give his 21 mo. sister toys to play with in her crib! This allows for our quiet time and prayer. Our kids then nap for a couple hours in the early afternoon. This is what works for us normally. Right now hubs and kids are pretty much on a normal pattern but I am off...which throws our house through a loop! I am the zombie you were talking about!! Why oh why do pregnant woman get insomnia? Or am I the only one?
I have tried so hard to get up early and just can't.
My dh doesn't even get home until about 11:45pm or even after midnight. I usually stay up and make sure he gets something to eat and we talk a bit and then I go to sleep. Now I have to get up at 5:30 am to take my son to seminary but normally got right back to sleep because I am just so tired.
I want to start the day early but don't know how I can.
So for the whine..= P
I wish I knew why pregnant women get insomnia! You are not the only one, the only problem is that mine carried on from pregnancy and pops up still once in awhile! Calcium realy helps though!
I'm glad I'm not the only one who has a toddler that stays up until 9:00-10:00pm!
I have been able to keep the same morning schedule for the past 20 years of marriage, through four children and all. My husband gets up first to have his Bible/prayer time alone, then gets me up. I prep his breakfast and pack his lunch while he showers, then have my Bible/prayer time after he leaves. The children usually didn't rise until an hour or so after that, so it usually worked out very well for us. Of course, everyone got to bed around 9 or 10, then got up at 7 or 8. After breakfast and morning chores, we started school. I would say, just do whatever works best for your family, but do it consistently. A regular routine is one key to harmony and efficiency.
Studies have shown that kids get their best growing in before midnight, so it's important to me to get my kids down for the night at a time where they can complete at least one circadian sleep rhythm. Bedtimes for kids have traditionally been earlier (and they need a lot more sleep than we do...babies need like 14 hours, and toddlers need about 11), and I think it's for good reason :)
Other than that, I tend to stay up later because that's the time I get to myself, and the time that I get to spend with my husband :) He is NOT a morning person and neither am I, so it works better for us that way. :)
Crystal,
Your post about rising early had a big effect on me! Instead of waking up around 7:30 when my toddler does, I'm now up at 6:00 for devotions, showering, and packing hubby's lunch.
It is AMAZING what a difference this has made in my energy, peacefulness, and overall attitude. (Even when I've been up with our baby in the middle of the night!) I'm no longer grumpy when, at 9:30, I still have three or four things to do before bed. Now, I can just go to bed, knowing that it will be accomplished in the morning (when I'll have more energy to do it anyways!).
My friend just mentioned that she's also considering rising early--and she hadn't even read your post. This must be a way God is working amongst us homemakers!
Thanks so much for sharing your wisdom on this.
This is a great post and full of excellent advice. Thanks for reminding us that we're all humans (and need our rest!)... it's a daily challenge to keep everything in balance and not expect ourselves to be Super Woman. I needed this reminder!
Blessings,
~Kristy
Homemaker's Cottage
I wanted to say another thing I recently learned is that the body does most of it's healing between the times of 10 p.m. and 6 a.m. This has been one of the encouragements for me to get in bed.
Because my husband tends to be a real night owl and I need about 10 hours of sleep (never less than 8), I've had to adjust my schedule to compensate. We wind down & put our son to bed between 9 and 10pm, and I stay up with the Mr. for another 2 hours or so until we go to bed together. He rises around 6am and leaves for work, and I get up only shortly before the baby, who sleeps until 10am. If I have a lot to do that day, I might get up as "early" as 8am, but that's rare.
It's kind of a weird schedule, but it's what works for us since we have time together after the little one is asleep, and on the Saturdays when the Mr. catches up on his sleep (he'll sleep for 12-14 hour stretches), baby & I are actually up for hours getting things done so that we can enjoy the rest of the day together as a family.
Having a routine that you could stick to would be nice...My husbands schedule alternates between three different shifts, so there's really no normalacy for us around here. I work four days per week and get up at about 4:30 on those days and try to spend what time I can with hubby on the days I'm not working. My house gets messy, we eat out more often than I would prefer, but our marriage is good and that's the most important thing, so I try not to stress over the other stuff.
I love that you, and many readers, have stressed that we all face different situations. We also have a rather unique situation working as houseparents at a residential school. During the day while the children we live with are at school, I homeschool and my husband heads up a number of departments across campus as well. Our week days are pretty full. My husband is basically working from the time he awakes until he goes to sleep. But, we work half of those hours together as a family. We have to have a schedule, a pretty tight one at this time in our lives.
Thank you for the reminders and challenges to get up on time in the mornings (which of course means different things to different people) and the obviously related reminder to go to bed at night. Sometimes it is so nice to sit together in a quiet house and catch a TV show when everything else is taken care of for the day. But, that half hour would be better spent sleeping more often than not.
A couple things that also help us in our jam-packed days include involving our children all along the way and breaking tasks into smaller ones or smaller time segments. Things may take longer with kids helping, but when we are talking about sleep, I can’t be sleeping when they are awake anyway, so may as well have them learning alongside me. It may take 45 minutes with them, but that’s an extra 20-30 minutes I can sleep tonight. I know Kathy mentioned that she needed to work when her daughter slept. I understand how that is, but she might be able to squeeze a few 15 minute blocks of work into her daughter’s awake time and have an extra hour to sleep at night.
I would love to spend an hour in God’s word in the morning, but I don’t have that much time then, so I pray for 10-15 minutes in the morning (using a prayer calendar), worship with my children during homeschool Bible time, and read the Bible and my devotional before bed at night while my husband is getting ready for bed. It keeps my mind on Him throughout the day and it doesn’t get lost in the shuffle.
Another thing that helped me was to realize just how little time some things take. For example, I can fold a load of laundry in just about 10 minutes! Emptying the dishwasher only takes 2-3, and refilling rarely takes more than 5. I used to think, “I don’t have time for that right now.” Now I think, “I have 5 minutes,” and I get it done.
Sometimes on those crazy days when so many unexpected interruptions crop up, I think about people with a ‘normal’ life. Ha, ha. Reading the many comments have reminded me that not many people live a ‘normal’ life.
I don't have any helpful advice since this is not a strength for me right now, but thank you for bringing up the topic and to those who have shared their advice.
I TRY to get up at 5:40 so I can exercise before work, but I sure seem to hit that snooze button a lot. Late nights are just me puttering around. But since my husband goes to bed sooooo late (2am) its hard to go to bed when there is so much on the internet to read!
For the majority of our family life, I have been a stay and work from at home mom, doing in-home day care while the kids were growing up. Our youngest is now four years old and I am back to teaching full-time outside the home.
I am still a wife and mother that has the devine blessing to take care of my family.
I get up at 5AM, start and complete 2 loads of laundry, start and complete making breakfast for the family, exercise, read my devotionals, plan for lunch and dinner, read e-mails from work, etc., all before 6:45AM when I have to leave for work.
Sometimes I am tired when I get home from teaching, but I really do count my blessings for the family I have. When I get home I make dinner, sweep and mop, all the normal stuff a stay at home mom does. On the weekends, I sew, quilt, read.
The reason I am posting this is to encourage others to give complete trust in the Lord! Through HIM all things can be done! Lay your burdens down at His feet and he will relieve you of all your troubles.
I am so tired when I go to bed between 9 and 9:30 at night and I am happy that I was given another day to work on being a better help meet, mother and Christ-follower!
My goal is to start going to bed around 10pm. I tend to stay up way to late and then I'm a walking zombie. My husband is a night owl and I think I'm trying to compete with him. I desperately need more sleep! My goal is for us to start going to bed at the same time at least 2 nights a week. I'm really going to try harder starting tomorrow!
Good comments! Enjoyed what reading everyone does... Prayers for you and yours today! For light at the end of the child tunney (even tho we dearly love them, sometimes it's just nice to have them grown and believers!), check www.xanga.com/rosemee1.
Crystal, I didn't get a chance to read all the posts, but I just want to tell you this was a breath of fresh air! I used to read your blog almost a year ago, but lost my internet access (complicated situation), but we just got internet access back at home. I couldn't wait to check your blog! I'm so glad I did :-)
I just got back from a homeschool conference this past weekend, and one of the workshops I went to was on Proverbs 31. The woman doing it is a mom of five who is very sweet and had a lot of good to say, but she really got me discouraged. She recommended rising early (she get's up at 5 and was SHOCKED to learn that I have a hard time getting up at 7!). When I asked her what time she went to bed she said 11 or 11:30. I tried to get her to explain how I reconcile early rising with need for sleep, and time with my husband, and family time, and she basically just told me to pray about it, and that she never said it would be easy.
I just know there is no way I could be a nice momma and wife on six hours of sleep on a consistent basis. I have never been able to function on six hours, and right now I am pregnant, and our two year old is not sleeping well at night, so I am not even getting a solid night's sleep as it is.
All that to say, it was just refreshing for you to share what has worked for your family, and to be encouraged to find something that will work for mine, without feeling like I have to make it work on six hours of sleep or I am just not a good wife and mom.
Once again, thanks :-) It's good to be back!
Melissa
Makaylah, 12/02
Sophia, 9/05
Ahava Adriel, in heaven
One on the way, edd 8/08
This may have already been covered, but I'm struggling along with those who said that by getting up early, they also end up waking up their kids and thus the day just gets going way too early. We are currently living in some friends' basement so our quarters are pretty close. I think I would do really well to start getting up at 5am and getting some things done (my brain also works better in the morning), but even if I make it upstairs silently, one or the other of them seems to just "know" that I'm up and therefore, they should be up. I'm hoping someone might have some suggestions for how I can make this work.
Also, I think someone (was it you, Crystal, or someone else?) said they don't let their kids get out of bed until 7:00. I'm just curious, do you have children who wake up before 7:00 and don't mind playing quietly in bed until mom comes and gets them, or do you have one like my 15-month-old who screams until I come for him? I really want to apply the "stay in bed till 7:00" rule. Do you think he will eventually just catch on?
Would love some advice from anyone who's reading this.
This is for chillie if you are reading this--
I had friends who kept a digital clock in their girls room and taught them that they couldn't get out of bed until it said 7:00. They kept quiet toys and books in a basket by their bed and it seemed to work for them. It was especially important in their situation because a toddler and a small child shared a room. I believe at first they worked on some sort of a reward system to get it in place. The oldest daughter would get one fingernail polished each day that she stayed in bed until 7. When she had completed both hands she got a new book or something and then she knew the rewards were over. Good luck!
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